The Copper Pit

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The open pit copper mine in southwest New Mexico shut down suddenly in the early 1980’s. The decision came just three years after Drayton Earth, Inc. commenced operations.

No one asked why at the time. They all knew.

The mine had claimed dozens of employees over the short time it was open. They were reported as typical mining and industrial accidents. There was even a report of a wild animal attack. But anyone who ever worked the pit knew those reports were pure garbage.

One May evening just before end of shift, ten workers were killed. It was the last straw, and Drayton Earth’s management team gave the order to shut the mine down immediately, and for good.

The next day, explosives teams set off charges and sealed the main tunnel entrance. And after that, no more copper was extracted from the pit.

The company erected a tall, barbed wire fence around the perimeter of the mine, and the town maintained it after Drayton Earth left. Over the years, kids would wander to the pit to gawk through the fence. Occasionally some brave teenager would try to scale the fence, but the Sheriff’s Office always managed to show up before any of them made it over.

Until now.

Mark and Gabriel had been friends since fifth grade, had started getting in trouble around seventh, and showed no signs of reform in eleventh. Their mischief was mainly victimless, unless you count the number of beers they’d managed to kill. Still and all, they weren’t troublemakers. They just liked to get into trouble.

One Saturday night after a party at another friend’s house, filled with liquid courage and a lack of an agenda, they made their way to the pit.

It wasn’t unusual for high school kids to hang out around the pit. Because, why not. And this Saturday night things were business as usual.

“You see the hole,” Joe, a classmate, called at them as the wandered up.

“Yeah, Joe. It’s a great big hole,” Gabriel said.

“Not the pit, moron,” Joe said. “I mean this one.”

Joe pointed to a hole in the fence. It wasn’t a big one, just an area that had rolled up from the ground.

“Whoa!” Mark said. “Anyone, you know….”

“Not that I’ve seen. You want to?”

“Are you crazy?” Gabriel asked. “What would we do if we went through.”

“Explore, my man. There’s a path to the bottom over there,” Joe said nodding his head in the general direction of the path.

Mark and Gabriel could not think of a compelling reason to say no, so the three of them took turns crawling under the fence, making sure no one was watching.

The moon was full, and the night sky was clear. They could see well enough to make their way to the winding path down to the bottom of the pit.

It took longer to make the climb than expected, and about 45 minutes into the trek, they turned their phone flashlights on.

“Climbing back up is going to suck,” Gabriel said.

“If the mine kills us, we don’t have to worry about that,” Joe said.

The boys had a good laugh.

Once they reached the bottom, they wandered around the pit. The mining equipment and all other property left with Drayton Earth decades ago.

The only thing visible was a metal shed that was dwarfed by the the collapsed mine entrance nearby. The boys, naturally, had to check it out.

The door was unlocked and opened without a problem. There wasn’t much in the shed other than an old metal desk and a deteriorating chair.

Mark opened a desk drawer, which made a horrible metallic groan.

Inside were rotted rubber bands, some old paper clips, a few long dead pens. And a journal.

The boys gathered around this find, and began to read. They were convinced it would tell them about hidden treasures. It did not.

***

“You don’t need to know who I am. I worked this mine from day one until that horrible day we closed it. I wrote this and left it here in case anyone ever came back with thoughts of opening it. That is something that can never happen.

The first one to die in the mine was Al.

He’s the one that found it, and, God help me, I was with him.

We’d just started and were following our foreman’s instructions to start digging in the Northwest tunnel. Al’s light caught something, I don’t know, oily and shiny. He walked towards it. This kind of sickly howling filled the air, and the next thing I know Al was knocked onto the ground. I couldn’t see what was doing it well. It wasn’t that big. Maybe the size of a coyote. Then Al just slid away. I’ll never forget his screams. I ran after him, but it was dark, and I couldn’t catch up. Al was gone.

The company wrote it off as a wild animal attack. What kind of wild animal lives in a mine?

But, I needed the job, and I let it go. Though I still heard Al’s screams in my dream. Still do.

The next time the thing struck I wasn’t there. All I know is it killed four men. Only one survivor got a glimpse of the thing. He said it was about the size of a bear, and that it had a hide that seemed to be like that rainbow oil scum you sometimes see on water. And he said before it struck it made a scream like a dying goat.

There were more attacks after that. Each time, the reports were that the creature was bigger. The company just lied about the causes of death. Collapsed ceilings were usually to blame. A dynamite mishap. We all knew it was a lie.

One time they sent in a group of private security to hunt the thing down. They had guns and dynamite. Not one of them came out alive.

You’d think that the law would want this death trap shut down. You’d think that. But the pit provided jobs and revenue and boosted practically every business in town.

It wasn’t until that last attack in May that everyone in charge knew they had to end it. The monster - and that’s what it was - attacked us as we were leaving the mine at the end of our shift.

This time I got a good look at it.

It had grown to the size of an elephant. I kid you not. But it wasn’t all in an easy to comprehend shape. It was more liquid than animal. It had giant oily tendrils - at least a dozen of them - coming out of its body, if that’s what you would call it.

The scream it made was sickening and terrifying. Some of the men just ran, paying no mind to which direction they were going.

The creature lashed out with its tendrils and drew the men towards it, devouring them in a gaping maw on its back.

By then, most of us were carrying guns to work. I, along with several others fired wildly at the thing. Most of us missed, and those of us who hit didn’t notice it taking much in the way of damage.

After my pistol was empty, I ran. I ran from the screams and the crawling horror in the mind.

I don’t know why the thing stopped pursuing the men. Maybe the guns discouraged it. Maybe it had simply had its fill.

The next day, the mine was closed and the tunnel sealed.

I was drunk. I stayed that way for a good long time.

Later, all of the survivors got together. Our foreman, Pete, had gathered us together. He told us the simple facts. We needed to never discuss the truth of what happened. The best we could hope for if we did that was being labelled as lunatics. To help out, Drayton Earth was going to give us all checks - big ones - if we’d sign off on a piece of paper that said we’d keep our traps shut.

We all signed.

The mine was secured. The pit fenced off, and the local law keeps it that way. But, things change, and I know someday that someone will manage to get in here just as I did.

So, to whoever is reading this. I say this. Get out of the pit and never come back. Tell the law how you got in so that no one follows.

You don’t want to meet this creature. You don’t even want to hear it, or it will be a part of you for the rest of your miserable life.”

***

The consensus of the boys was that the ledger was written by a prankster or a madman. Mark set the book down on the desk. “Maybe we should head out, huh?”

“Ghost story scare you?” Joe asked.

“No,” Mark said. “It’s just, you know, a long hike out of here. I’m not sure how smart this was.”

The others agreed and they left the shack, closing the door.

As they walked back towards the path, a rock fell behind them. They turned to see it tumble from the sealed off tunnel.

“That’s, um, weird,” Gabriel said.

Another rock fell, followed by several more. And soon there was a hole near the top of the wall.

The boys ran. Gabriel looked back. He couldn’t see it clearly, but the moonlight captured a glint of something the size of a large tree trunk reaching out of the hole and racing towards them. It glimmered like an oily rainbow.

The wall behind them exploded with shower of rocks. The sound of the rock fall subsided.

And in its place was a reverberating scream. Like a dying goat.